228Whenever you unseal their narrow dwelling and the honey kept in its treasuries, first, sprinkled with a draught of water, rinse your mouth, and hold out searching smoke in your hand. 231Twice they gather the heavy produce, there are two seasons of harvest: as soon as Taygete the Pleiad shows her comely face to the earth and spurns the streams of Ocean with her foot, or when the same star, fleeing the constellation of the watery Fish, goes down more sadly from the sky into the wintry waves. 236Their anger knows no bounds, and when hurt they breathe venom into their bites, and leave their hidden stings fixed in the veins, and lay down their lives in the wound.
239But if you fear a hard winter and will spare for the future, and pity their bruised spirits and broken fortunes, who would hesitate to fumigate with thyme and cut away the empty wax? 242for often an unseen lizard has gnawed the combs, and the chambers are crowded with light-shunning beetles, and the drone sits idle at another's food; or the fierce hornet has joined battle with unequal arms, or the dread race of moths, or the spider, hateful to Minerva, hangs her loose nets in the doorway. 248The more they have been drained, the more keenly they will all bend to repairing the ruins of their fallen race, and will fill the rows of cells and weave their granaries from flowers.